A Day in the Life: A Volunteer Visitor Guide

Volunteer Keith Macdona shares his experiences: 

I try to get to Clumber by eleven so I’m there when it starts to get busy. Some days I get in early and have a walk around the lake. It’s beautiful and so quiet first thing in the morning. I make sure I’ve read Clumber Weekly and the first thing I do is go into the Discovery Centre to find out what’s going on so I’m bang up to date. Next I walk round the Turning Yard and the Pleasure Grounds making sure everywhere is clean and tidy for our visitors.  It’s important our park looks good.

After that I’ll stay around the car park and Turning Yard areas for a while to meet and greet people.  People come to Clumber for all sorts of reasons. Some just come for a coffee at the cafe, some meet friends, some take the dog for a walk, some bring their children or grandchildren and others want the work out of a long bike ride or a walk. My job is to make sure that whatever they want to do, they have a great day out. 

Volunteer Visitor Guide Keith Macdona

As a Visitor Guide I make sure that every visitor I come into contact with gets a big smile and a warm greeting. I don’t pester people. It’s their day out. But I do keep my eyes open for people looking a bit lost or reading the information boards. I approach them and ask if they’re ok and if I can help with anything. That’s the best bit of being a Visitor Guide. You don’t need encyclopaedic knowledge of the trees, the birds or the history of Clumber Park. There are people around you who can know all that stuff. You just need to be prepared to chat, find out what our visitors want and tell them the best way to do it. I try to go the extra mile to help. If a first time visitor asks me where the cafe is I don’t give them directions, I walk with them. If someone is genuinely interested in knowing a bit more about Clumber I’ll have a stroll round with them, maybe suggesting things like a trip to the Walled Kitchen Garden or the Chapel. I’ve walked for two hours around the lake with one family.

At lunchtime I’ll go to the Mess Room at the Discovery Centre and have lunch with some other volunteers and staff.  This is a great way to find out what’s coming up in the future.

Keith's favorite area of the Park

After lunch I check everywhere is litter free again. I may help to clear a few tables at the cafe. The staff there can be rushed off their feet at busy times and we’re all in the same team. Then it’s back to welcoming our visitors again. I’ve helped people take cycles off cars, held dog leads while children are put in car seats, directed drivers to free spaces in the car park, pushed mobility scooters with flat batteries and even found a piece of string for a makeshift dog lead for a visitor who’d forgotten it. There is so much variety to being a Visitor Guide and you get out of the role what you put into it. That’s the problem with writing A Day In The Life Of A Visitor Guide. there’s no such thing because every day is different. Only one thing is the same. Our visitors really appreciate being welcomed to Clumber and enjoy having a Visitor Guide around.

I love my job. How many people can say that these days!

Happy National Volunteers' Week 2013

The first week in June every year is a time for celebrating the contribution of volunteers in organisations across the UK. Here at Clumber we are thankful for every single piece of work volunteers do, and although we hope volunteers feel appreciated all year round, we would like to take this opportunity to make a bit more of a fuss, because our volunteers are really special and we couldn't do a lot of what we do without them.

Over the next week, we will be posting stories here and sharing thanks from different teams.

Ring in the Olympics at Clumber Park

At 08:12 on 27th July 2012, thousands of people across the UK will be joining together to ring in the first day of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games as part of the 'All the Bells' project.

Work No. 1197: All the bells in a country rung as quickly and as loudly as possible for three minutes by Turner Prize-winning artist and musician Martin Creed is a London 2012 Festival commission and will be performed by you.

Join the Clumber Park team and be one of millions taking part in this historical event.

The theme at Clumber Park is bycicle bells - so bring your bike and join us by the Lake outside the Chapel just before 8.12am.  The first ring of the Chapel's tonne bell will mark the start of a 3 minute bicycle bell ring at Clumber.  If you have a bike, but don't have a bell you can pick one up from the cycle hire centre.  If you don't have a bike, why not come along and listen to the bells anyway or hire a bike and take a cycle ride around Clumber after the bell ringing - we're hoping it will be a unique 3 minutes to remember!

If you're not an early bird and need a pick me up, the Clumber cafe will be opening early on the 27th so you can pick up a coffee to wake you up!

We hope to see you there.

 

Flowering Fairies and Gardening Gnomes

It will soon be summer trail time again in the garden.  This year we are celebrating our garden helpers, the flower fairies and the garden gnomes.

The gnomes are great fun to have in the garden! They work very hard helping us with our jobs. They collect slugs and snails which damage our plants. They help feed the plants and they are great at weeding.

Some of them are very sporty. They’ve even entered a team in the London 2012 Olympics.

Mr Pilwinkle Gnome is always running laps around the garden. He’s entered the Marathon! Some of his friends have also entered other events, you’ll be able to see them practicing if you visit when the flowering fairies and gardening gnomes trail is running.


The fairies have been growing lots of flowers and fruit for everyone to see during the summer and our garden scarecrow fairy has been looking after the fairies in the soft fruit garden. She’s called Ruby Pomona. They have been casting spells on all the strawberries to make them delicious and juicy!
 

Everyone is really looking forward to the garden trail, and to seeing all our visitors dressed up as gnomes and fairies!

The trail will be running from 22 July to 2 September daily in the garden.

The trail is free to enter (normal garden entry fees apply).

Don't forget to keep a look out for the golden gnome!

Hope to see you there,
Hazel
Clumber Gardener

On yer Bike!

You know what it’s like, some-one asks a question and although you umm and arghh you mostly say “yes”. In reality, it was one of those moments when the answer to the question should have been no! Here am I memory fading slowly – well, when it suits! when someone asks to relate your tales of cycling. 

Where do I start? Do you want to know from the moment I sat on a cycle, bought my first cycle, or “accidentally” pushed my brother into a bunch of nettles as I let go of his bike, leaving him to fall off and be covered in nettle rash? Question, questions, questions!

I like cycling, having covered many miles during my years. Nowadays, most of my cycling takes place in Clumber. Then I have to make the next decision ...... should I go early, mid-morning, afternoon or evening? Decisions, decisions, decisions!

Suddenly, whilst looking at the various posters on the information board staring right at me was the answer to my questions and the decision made. Oh so easy! There was a cycling activity the next day – Saturday. My bike had a puncture – well to be truthful it needed two new tyres and inner tubes – so I used one from Cycle Hire ……… a brand new Raleigh Mountain Bike. Great I thought, much better than mine! 

Bikes are available to hire from our Cycle Hire Centre

We set-off in a relaxed manner, riding along the cycle tracks, woodland rides and the occasional bit of tarmac road. We learnt what the green strip of material was for on the weir near Hardwick Village, saw the Longhorn cattle and Jacob sheep busily eating their way through grass, young tree shoots and who knows what else! 

We saw some volunteers busily repairing a fence, heard the cuckoo with its distinctive call. There was the Common Buzzard flying high above us, through the trees a short distance away a small herd of wild deer looking inquisitively at us. 

It seemed only 10 minutes ago that we left Cycle Hire and here we were back! It was in fact an hour ago! Our leader told us we had covered about 7 miles in that time. That didn’t matter to me, I had been cycling again. Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah!

And now it's National Bike Week, so I can get back on the saddle and out in the sunshine (at last).  To find out what we have going on at Clumber this week, check out the Clumber Park website... or, just hire a cycle, get a map and enjoy yourself!

Roy,

Clumber Park Ranger